By HELEN THOMAS, HEARST NEWSPAPERS

Updated 10:00 pm, Tuesday, December 4, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Gun-control advocates have a powerful new voice in the Senate who is seeking to close a loophole that allows weapons to be sold at gun shows without background checks.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who cited cases in which suspected terrorists were caught with weapons bought at U.S. gun shows, says he will try to "force Senate consideration" early next year of the measure. Former President Clinton tried but failed to curb such sales. Hats off to the senator if he succeeds.

A spokesman said McCain hopes to attach an amendment to appropriate legislation, possibly a homeland security bill, in January. The amendment would require background checks taking up to three days for would-be buyers from private, unlicensed dealers at gun shows. After three years following enactment of the law, most checks on such purchasers would have to be completed in 24 hours.

"Foreign terrorists have exploited a loophole to buy weapons at gun shows," McCain said. "Clearly, alleged members of terrorist organizations have been able to secure guns and weapons using the gun-show loophole."

The senator had introduced a similar bill in May, but he said he was submitting a new version now because the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks lent "some urgency to tightening the law."

Baker also took aim at another group called Americans for Gun Safety, which seeks to close gun-show loopholes, claiming it "shamelessly manipulates" the terrorist "acts of war to jump-start its stalled political agenda."

"This is political opportunism at its calculated worst, and it cannot be allowed to spread unchallenged," Baker fumed.

He called the focus on gun shows an "outrageous attack on Americans' Second Amendment rights." He said he was particularly incensed because since Sept. 11 many Americans have been "purchasing their first firearms and learning to use them safely and responsibly for self-protection."

McCain has never been a strong gun-control advocate. In fact, he voted against the 1993 gun-control law, which requires a background check for all prospective purchasers of guns sold by licensed dealers.

But his spokesman said McCain believes that "the rights of gun owners come with responsibilities."

The Violence Policy Center, a gun-control advocacy group here, reports that a document posted on a Web site used by an al-Qaida fugitive tells prospective Muslim holy warriors they "should use lax firearms laws in the United States to get sniper and military assault rifle training."

The center quotes the document as telling trainees that in some countries, especially the United States, firearms training is available to the public and that "it is perfectly legal" to obtain AK-47 assault rifles.

The document also advises that "useful courses to learn are sniping, general shooting and other rifle courses," and it specifically discourages handgun training "until rifle training is mastered."

Tom Diaz, vice president of the center, said, "This document and the link to the cold-blooded assassins who carried out the suicide attacks" on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "show conclusively that our lax gun laws and our tolerance of the most extreme one-stop shopping mall" -- the gun show -- are helpful to would-be terrorists.

Diaz, a former CIA agent, worries that terrorists could obtain the 50-caliber sniper rifles that can penetrate armor plate, down helicopters and, when loaded with armor-piercing incendiary ammunition, blow up fuel and chemical storage tanks.

He insists that such weapons can be purchased more easily than handguns in the United States. Furthermore, he says, 25 50-caliber sniper rifles weapons were purchased in this country by the al-Qaida terrorist network of Osama bin Laden in the 1980s.

"This chilling new information presents the NRA and its gun-industry cohorts with a stark choice: Support America or support terror," Diaz argues.

Supporters of closing the gun-show loophole are expected to cite evidence that a man named Ali Boumelhem, linked to the anti-Israel Hezbollah and convicted in Michigan on Sept. 10 of conspiring to smuggle guns to Lebanon, was seen buying weapons at three U.S. gun shows.

Even without the threat of weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, this nation faces a scary, general proliferation of handguns and its appalling consequences.

Earlier this week, President Bush, who does not support gun-control legislation, told a gathering of U.S. attorneys that they have a "clear-cut challenge to fight gun violence." He said more teenagers die from gun-shot wounds than from any other causes.

Tragically, the FBI reports, in the five-year period from 1995 to 1999, 32.1 percent of child handgun homicide victims were murdered by another child. In that period, two children a day, on average, were killed with handguns. Black children suffered a far higher rate -- seven times higher than white children.

Let's hope members of Congress who usually are allergic to any form of gun control will see the sanity of supporting background checks on all prospective buyers at gun shows.